The Bigger Picture - The root cause issues that must be dealt with.

We mentioned in "Our Approach", the universal and root cause
problems all businesses face at some time, especially those in a
growth phase or post rapid growth and in steady decline.
This cuts across sector, industry, age and size of business!

The usual litany of reasons cited for business failure are invariably not causes but symptoms!

Take any of these reasons provided by a recent CIPC commissioned research paper conducted by a credible university, and ask "why?" in an iterative fashion, like a 5 year old might do.
Take "pressure from creditors" and ask the MD or CEO "why?":

Q:Why did you have pressure from creditors?

A:Because we missed a few payments to them.

Q:why did you miss payments to them?

A:Because we read the market incorrectly, and ended up with too much stock we could not sell.

Q:Why did you mis-read the market incorrectly?

A:Because I relied on the instincts of my Sales team and because i was too busy attending to other things.

Q:And why were you too busy? and why did Sales misread the market?(which they seem to have done previously as well.)

A:I was busy sorting out operational IT problems and Sales went on instinct and feel rather than data.

Q:DO you mean that you never had a suitable COO and IT manager able to run the show?

A:err, yes

I invite you to do the same on any of these reasons cited for failure.
Do not make the mistake of confusing symptom and cause, which you will find almost always distill to the following:

The need for the executive team to grow as leaders
especially in their
abilities to delegate and build effective teams.

The need for systems and structures to handle the
complexity that comes
with growth and size.

The ability to navigate the increasingly tricky market
dynamics
as success marks arrival in a competitively aware
marketplace;

But so what? How do we deal with
these issues?

The Executive Team

The need for the executive team to grow as leaders
especially in their
abilities to delegate and build effective teams.

Leaders growing with the business.

Problem Narrative

Symptoms and Failure Points

Addressed By

This applies to corporate, single business units, or successful start-ups. The role of the
entrepreneur or the business management changes as businesses grow in
headcount, especially in the critical transition phases when growing from 10 to 30 people, and most
definitely when it reaching 50 people or more. Corporate entities and business units of large organizations can carry this problem
as they have centralised functions, such as finance or marketing, but start-ups feel the pain immediately.
Where once the management could be close to the business, and control everything,
this becomes less and less the case. What makes a good entrepreneur or
manager of any smaller enterprise can count against them. That attention to
detail, the willingness to work hard, roll up their sleeves and lead by
example, does not solve the problem and it now makes them the point of blockage. The solution must always lie in the business leadership being able to
build teams in a structure that empowers the organisation. This ability to delegate outcomes to capable teams is key, without it
time-lines slip, quality is eroded, people become frustrated with the business, etc

Broadly speaking this is
a leadership failure, where we do not invest time in acknowledging,
understanding and addressing our own part in mistakes made. This is why
all Leadership begins with Personal Development. Presidents, War time
Leaders, Civic leaders as well as business leaders neglect this. We all
have some need for this. An inability to take longer time horizons on solving problems, to attack the heart of the problem, and to
be able to attract talented people into a business who are empowered to deliver is a key leadership failure.

Personal Development
Module
Leadership Module
People & Org Module

Complexity requires Data, Formality/Discipline & Structure.

The need for systems and structures to handle the complexity that comes with growth and size.

Data, Discipline & Structure.

Problem Narrative

Symptoms and Failure Points

Addressed By

Instinct is highly
under-rated, but as businesses grow, mistakes become harder to notice
and thus make cheaply. Bad news also has a habit of getting
over-looked, disguised and drowned out by good-news. "We have 15 new
customers!" is not the same as "We have 15 new customers, but lost 5,
and have lots of service complaints" Everyone is entitled to their own
opinion, but not their own facts! Most growing businesses,
run into a wall of bad data. The data problem leads naturally to
process standardization. As you begin to ask the right
questions, we naturally ask, "How long does this take?" "How
come we have this complaint constantly?" Putting solutions in place
re-enforces the need for some attention to process.

The right questions are
either not being asked, or not being answered, this will be
reflected in Strategy & Execution failures, where
knowing your customer and why they use your business is a basic input
and how we can measure business activity is key. It is also a failure
in people where curiosity and talent always strive to gain more
insights. The worst realization, is that your
profitable business is becoming unprofitable as you grow,
scale is being lost and inefficiencies are being allowed to embed
themselves.

Navigating a Competitive Market.

The ability to navigate the increasingly tricky market
dynamics as success marks arrival in a competitively aware
marketplace.

Thought leadership - Navigating a Competitive Market..

Problem Narrative

Symptoms and Failure Points

Addressed By

Where once you were
small and flying beneath the radar, now you've popped up, get ready for
unwelcome attention. Now it might just be worth forsaking 6 months of
profits via aggressive marketing, predatory pricing, and poaching your
talent to see you go under. Against the law, for sure, but by the time
they have finished with you, you'll have no energy, no confidence and
no money to do anything about it. You need to outwit and outperform the
market and build some reserves to take the occasional knock.

If you haven't freed
yourself and your leadership team to Lead the business instead of
managing it, got the data to make good decisions, insight so you react
before the rest of the market, then get ready for some pain. It is
coming. You may as well just get acquired by a bigger competitor as
soon as you can. Or let's preempt what will happen and avoid it or if we can't avoid it, make sure we win the fight or make the fight not worthwhile having!